Strategies Used by Students in Translating Idioms from English to Arabic.

Abstract

The present study which is made up of two chapters attempt to investigate the strategies used by Master one students when translating Idioms from English (target language) to Arabic (source language). In this work, we intended to shed light on the different strategies used by EFL Master one at Mila University in translating idioms, as well as the difficulties that may face the students while doing so. In this research, it is hypothesized that if the language learners use appropriate strategies to translate idioms, they will be able to produce an efficient Translation of the target text. In order to confirm this hypothesis, this study use a quantitative method in data collection; a questionnaire and a test have been given to Master one students at Mila University to find out the main strategies used by them when translating idioms from English to Arabic. After the analysis of the data, the results show that the students use different strategies when translating idioms from English to Arabic; the most used strategies are paraphrasing and word for word translation, followed by translating by omission and cultural substitution. By using paraphrasing strategy, similar word and form, cultural substitution, the translator may produce an efficient translation. Whereas literal translation is not efficient in all cases.